4/13/2023 0 Comments South pacific joe cableStill, I like director Alan Muraoka’s curatorial reverence toward the script. And the book’s humor is notably low-voltage-Nellie’s puzzling over the French pronunciation of “jeep” or Emile’s reference to Small Rock instead of Little Rock, Arkansas. The giggling antics of the “Wash That Man” scene feel forced. They sure did layer on the reprises back then, and it’s hard to sustain a moment of infatuation, as Emile and Nellie do, while holding glasses of brandy and staring into each other’s eyes during a musical interlude. The show is dated and stilted in other ways too. If un-PC is detrimental to your system, consider this a trigger warning. Those viewers won’t be reassured either by the later coconut-shell bra, gender-reversed old-school camp of “Honey Bun,” or by Bloody Mary’s pimping out her daughter. I chose to enjoy its pent-up delirium:īut for those who don’t, I understand. It’s a choice, really, whether you want to surrender, in the #MeToo years, to the grab-ass aesthetic of “There Is Nothing Like a Dame,” led by David Schlumpf as the mischievous Luther Billis and his horndog companions. (Photo: Stan Barouh)Īs an astute and somewhat appalled college woman sitting next to me pointed out, for all its racial enlightenment, South Pacific is mired in the gender stereotypes of its era. Campo as Bloody Mary with part of the cast of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s SOUTH PACIFIC. Campo, as Bloody Mary, paints an alluring musical vision of “Bali Ha’i” and leavens “Happy Talk” with a hint of unhappy fear. Jessica Lauren Ball, as Nellie, is a sunny presence with a clear, ringing delivery on “Evening” and “A Wonderful Guy,” and she makes a fun jazzy romp out of “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair.” Alex Prakken, as Joe, conveys the youthful, head-over-heels intoxication of “Younger Than Springtime.” And Cheryl J. But Michals, whose career bridges musicals and opera, makes them fresh, velvet-lining his powerful voice with thoughtful, self-assured phrasing. The very familiarity of these numbers-especially “Some Enchanted Evening”-gives them an added level of difficulty. The couples’ longing as they wrestle with these prejudices are the ingredients for unforgettable songs like “Some Enchanted Evening,” “A Wonderful Guy,” “Younger Than Springtime,” and “This Nearly Was Mine,” the last of which, in Michals’s hands, is the emotional apex of an altogether impressive night. Joe Cable in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s SOUTH PACIFIC at Olney Theatre Center. Alexandra Palting as Liat and Alex Prakken as Lt. Nellie can’t stomach Emile’s having sired two children with his now-deceased Polynesian wife, and Joseph is unable to imagine Liat in his Main Line Philadelphia life after the war. On an island key to the allied campaign against Japan, Emile, a middle-aged French plantation owner, woos an American nurse, Nellie Forbush and a young American lieutenant, Joseph Cable, falls in love at first sight with Liat, the Tonkinese daughter of Bloody Mary, a betelnut-chewing sassy vendor of grass skirts, shrunken heads, and other souvenirs for bored G.I.’s. South Pacific asks, in its World War II context but in a more universal vein too, what good is fighting against fascism unless you know what you’re fighting for?īut its progressive instincts are wrapped in romance. It’s got to be drummed in your dear little earĪnd people whose skin is a diff’rent shade You’ve got to be taught from year to year The iconic 1949 musical’s message of a dawning but fragile racial harmony remains all too timely in the era of torch-bearing bigots, caged immigrant children, and a president deriding “shithole” countries. Olney’s Artistic Director Jason Loewith decided to produce the show after last year’s Charlottesville white-supremacist march. (Photo: Stan Barouh)Īnd William Michals, as the French plantation owner Emile de Becque, shines, with his committed, ardent performance and gorgeous baritone, in Olney Theatre’s first-ever production of this classic. Jessica Lauren Ball as Nellie Forbush and William Michals as Emile de Becque in Olney Theatre Center’s South Pacific. Was ever a message musical wrapped in such a luxurious bounty of romance? Those love songs! Seventy years later, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific still floors us with its lyricism.
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